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Logistics
NewCold
Who is NewCold?
NewCold is a global leader in automated cold storage and logistics, providing highly efficient and sustainable supply chain solutions for the food industry. The company operates various facilities across 3 continents, with additional sites under construction. Using state-of-the-art technology, its warehouses are highly automated, thus delivering a significant reduction in costs, while enhancing food safety and operational efficiency.
The company has over 2,000 employees globally. Located in Breda, the Netherlands, its Innovation & Support Center houses the global IT team. Among these is Mark Hensbergen, the IT Enterprise Architect at NewCold, who told us about his experience with BlueDolphin.
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The Challenge
Enabling rapid growth
NewCold has been growing rapidly over the past years, both in the number of sites and the expansion of existing ones, leading to increased IT complexity. All of NewCold’s warehouses use robotics and automation technologies for storing, maintenance, and transportation. Additionally, each facility uses a set of systems and applications to meet a variety of requirements — including that of the building, customers, and local legislation.
To manage the complexity of the IT landscape, the global IT Team is taking measures to ensure efficiency and compliance across all locations. Employing Enterprise Architecture methods is instrumental for IT to effectively support this growth.
Ongoing innovation and operational improvement
NewCold is more than a logistics company; it is also a technology-driven organization. Consequently, there is a high ambition to design, test, and implement new technologies (a combination of OT and IT) and find innovative ways of working across all operational teams. At the same time, the services offered to customers are continuously being extended and improved. This leads to Mark receiving multiple requests for new applications every week.
Rationalization and maintenance of the IT landscape
To support the fast adoption of new technologies, as well as perform regular maintenance of the IT landscape, NewCold’s IT team required a suitable EA tool for application portfolio management and application life cycle management activities.
“BlueDolphin has already proven to be a crucial tool for getting the overview and understanding of NewCold’s application landscape and underlying Infrastructure and how these support NewCold’s capabilities in 18 locations across 3 continents.”
Mark Hensbergen
IT Enterprise Architect, NewCold
Why BlueDolphin by ValueBlue?
Mark chose to replace NewCold's previous EA tool with BlueDolphin primarily for the following strengths:
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The support of key standards such as Archimate and BPMN 2.0; consistency between Archimate and BPMN models
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Ease of customizing the object model
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The ability to provide custom attributes with relationships, e.g. protocols used for data flows
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The 'diagram' feature that creates the context diagram for each object is fully automated
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The powerful search function, especially when indexing several fields
In this way, BlueDolphin allows Mark to better map the relationships between objects. He can easily create diagrams to derive insights and share them with relevant stakeholders across the organization. The tool also allows for detailed descriptions of applications, search queries, and overall maintenance of key IT and business data.
The Solution
BlueDolphin as a central repository
Mark has transferred and regularly integrates data from multiple sources into BlueDolphin, using it as a central repository for the IT landscape and the underlying architecture. He has already recorded hundreds of applications, with the associated information, such as application owner or vendor, and their relationships. He regularly tracks changes to the landscape and approves requests according to internal criteria, including a cyber risk assessment.
Connecting applications to the architecture
To create visibility for the wider organization, he shares diagrams and insights with different departments. For example, the IT department can view different groups of applications, such as those for warehouse or transportation management. By linking them to processes and capabilities, he provides a comprehensive view of NewCold’s operations.
Apart from mapping department-specific data, the next step is to include different warehouse operations. He plans to record the architecture of each warehouse, identifying which capabilities, such as automated or manual loading and unloading, are associated with each facility. This could help provide operational insights and support process improvement for new projects.
Modeling the infrastructure
While Enterprise Architecture typically focuses on business architecture and the application landscape, Mark noted that BlueDolphin has proven highly valuable for modeling the infrastructure. He was able to map the relationships between software and underlying machinery (virtual or physical), as well as all the global networks (subnets, VLAN ID’s, etc.), and the devices that are planned to be connected to those networks. This includes not only IT devices but also other equipment like cameras. In this way, he is able to provide a comprehensive overview and insight to stakeholders who don’t have direct access to the infrastructure.
The Results
A single source of truth
Mark calls BlueDolphin the “master” tool for application data, as well as for any relationships between the applications and other architectural layers. As opposed to using traditional tools like Visio or PowerPoint, he can keep the information up-to- date and rely on the fact that changes to objects are reflected in associated views. He is currently working on integrating BlueDolphin with the company’s SharePoint.
Secure and comprehensive maintenance of the IT landscape
With a complete overview of applications, Mark can now more easily run rationalization initiatives and assess new application requests. He can run queries based on the application function and avoid redundancy or overspending. He also sends triggers to the cybersecurity team for additional checks, to ensure compliance and mitigate risk.
Better insights into projects and customers
Apart from storing the essential application data, Mark can map the relationships between the applications and different departments, capabilities, facilities, and customers. This provides invaluable insights. NewCold has complete visibility into its current operations, can better anticipate future needs for projects, and is set to enhance both its infrastructure and relationships with customers and suppliers.